Conville & Walsh

In Almagen, a small village in the Andalucian mountains, Staffe nurses himself back from the brink of death. Rebuilding his relationship with Marie, his sister, and about to become an uncle again, Staffe finds himself being accepted into the community. Then, one day, his friend Manolo takes Staffe to visit Almeria and tells him about a body that has been found buried in an old greenhouse by the Mediterranean.

Staffe becomes inexorably drawn to the case and befriends a journalist, Raul, who presents the killing as a simple case of drug-trafficking gone wrong. However, it soon emerges that this murder might arouse ghosts of civil war; the body was killed in the manner of a Falangist torture.

When Raul plunges to his death in a drunken car crash, Almagen’s own secret past slowly rises to the surface, bringing with it family feuds along with a famous artist, a Vietnam war veteran, and a beautiful German heiress.

Between the sierra and the sea, everyone seems to want to bury the past – except Staffe. Unable to help himself, he soon finds both his and his sister’s lives threatened by his discoveries. Once unearthed, the past refuses to go away and the closer the unseen enemy gets, the more Staffe’s own past haunts him. Torn and trapped by two different worlds, Staffe finds himself closer than ever to the man who murdered his parents.